


Bright Stedfast Star

by Quillori



Category: Die Zauberflöte | The Magic Flute - Mozart/Schikaneder, Opera
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 11:45:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12480828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/pseuds/Quillori





	Bright Stedfast Star

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zdenka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/gifts).



_3rd Lady:_  
What is the night without stars? Only darkness. There must be stars, a thousand thousand little, broken lights, scattered and scintillating, like tiny chips of diamond dusting the infinite black of the sky. And it is in their number that you find their power. One star is nothing: only a little dot, a tiny blemish, of no account at all. Two would be no better. You cannot make a pattern with two points. No, it is a multitude that is required. Everything, all of it, the constellations, the wandering planets, the turning circles within circles, the art and the science and the mystery of astrology, it comes down to patterns, and for patterns you need many points. And the smallest multitude is three. You see it in the earliest counting: one, two, many. You see it the secret wisdom of numbers: one, the whole and single, unity; two, divided, duality, the thing that is and its opposite; three, the number of possibilities, of choice, of fate: three wishes, three roads, three prayers. With three points you can mark out a space, with three options you can go beyond the stark yes and no, true and false, being and not-being. Three is the number of life itself - growing, flourishing and dying - and of time in its endless passage: sunset and night and sunrise, dawn and day and dusk.

 _2rd Lady:_  
What is the night without stars? Nothing. Either it is dark, or the moon is up, and there is light. One or the other, and nothing interesting about either. Oh, people make up stories, a grand battle between good and evil … a blessed union of opposites … some mystic truth where existence and non-existence combine. But people will say anything, it doesn’t make it true. Look at the moon. It can never make up its mind: one day it’s full, another it’s vanished away. That’s the way it always is with duos: two things are inherently unstable. Just try sitting on a stool with two legs. 

_1st Lady:_  
Can the night be truly said to exist, without stars to see the darkness by? But with the stars - ah! that’s another thing entirely. They make a river of light, a road across the sky, a pathway the wise may discover. It is by the pattern of the stars that men may navigate, passing safely from the known to the unknown and back again. It is by the stars, too, the men may gain knowledge, reading the hidden ways of things, the private records of providence. And how, in daily life, may one gain knowledge, dredging certainty from the shifting, conflicting accounts of others, from the baffling confusion that assails the senses? 

_3rd Lady:_  
There are so many paths to error, but many paths also to the truth, for there are as many truths as there are stars in the sky, and it is the path of wisdom to see things from all sides. That is why she created us, three sisters who sprang from one spell, one thought instantiated in three bodies. We are her eyes, her strength, her wand: for her we slay dragons. One thing in many parts, three individuals who act as one, we are the very power and wisdom of the star-filled sky.

 _2rd Lady:_  
That’s where _he_ went wrong, of course. Very much a black and white thinker, as it were. Apparently no one ever taught him to count past two. The very thought of setting himself up in opposition to her, as though there could be a stable system with him as good and her as evil, him triumphant, her defeated. And he made the same mistake, again and again. Look at his view of personal relationships: always two people, one to be male, one female; one to lead and one to follow. You can see why he, personally, ended up alone. There’s just no room, if you set it up like that. What about friends? Children? Sisters? And of course reality kept creeping in around the edges, whatever he tried. No one passed his test without outside help. No one even passed it maintaining his precious duality, one leading, one following, one strong and important, one humble and dependent. No two couples even passed it the same way, for no two couples are the same, something he might have realised, if he hadn’t been so obsessed by sorting everything into two boxes.

 _1st Lady:_  
Of course, she tried that too, in her way. She had the power, her daughter was to be innocent and helpless. She would decide all, all else would do her bidding. Not that she saw a duality, not as he did. No, to her there was always a unity, a single thing, and that thing was her. She was the queen, and to be a queen implies the existence of subjects, inferiors; but those subjects aren’t real and independent, they’re just part of the concept of being queen, and so a part of her. We too, in our multitude, were merely part of her wisdom, her puissance, created by her from her own soul, split off and refracted into many parts, reified and made substantial, but still reflections, emanations of herself. 

But of course, we’re still here. A single point is nothing, nonexistent, for it has no reference, nothing to mark its existence, nothing for it to contemplate. Empty darkness. Eternal night. But we are not a single point.

 _2rd Lady:_  
Have you noticed? Day follows night, and night follows day. The stars come out, the stars are gone and day arises. What then? Why, night falls once more, and again the stars. Your system of wins and losses, of triumph and defeat, is nothing but a merry-go-round, painted horses endlessly rising and falling, now up, now down, now in front, now behind. And we are still here.

 _3rd Lady:_  
Still here, like the patterns of stars in the sky, like the passage of life from youth to wisdom to decay, like the choices that await you, ensnaring your feet (to the left, to the right, straight ahead). We are the eyes that see from every side, from which nothing is hidden. We were bound into the the thread of being from the start, and it is we who are the observers who judge its length, its composition. And we will still be here, right to the end.


End file.
